Increased access to the Internet has had the unintended effect of increasing the reach of software programs that capture personal information of users without their informed consent (“Spyware”) or that corrupt computers without the user's knowledge and informed consent (“Malware”). In addition, a cottage industry has arisen in software that automatically downloads and displays advertising while an application is being used (“Adware”).
Such programs, when installed on the user's computer, can eavesdrop on the user, collect sensitive information and, in some cases, take control of the user's computer. In some cases, these software programs send messages out to other computers or servers, providing a conduit for the transfer of potentially sensitive information.
Another result of the increased access to the Internet is a rapid rise in reading news, shopping, and even watching television programs online. The rapid rise in online media consumption has fuelled an equally rapid increase in the amount and sophistication of online advertising. Online advertising started with simple banner ads or other types of static displays within a web page. As advertisers have looked for mechanisms to make online advertisements more eye-catching, animation products such as Adobe® Flash® (from Adobe Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif.) have become more and more popular for delivering advertising content (in the form of a small web format (SWF) file). Flash® can provide advertisers a mechanism to present animation and even interactive advertisements embedded within standard web pages. However, with ever increasing sophistication comes an ever increasing potential for hackers to exploit security holes to deliver malware or take control of a user's system.
An increasing use of advertisements for malicious purposes presents a need for a system and method to pro-actively monitor, detect and filter potentially malicious online advertisements before a user can inadvertently fall prey to an attack.